


smoke signals as a cry for help

by gumsneaker



Category: The Thing (1982)
Genre: < except without alien and so and such forth, (sorry), (this is because they are dead), Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, MOSTLY. but the most hopeful version of it, Minor Original Character(s), Past Character Death, Post-Canon, Speculation, i'm not tagging the other men from the outpost even though they're mentioned, not worth being tagged...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29570244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gumsneaker/pseuds/gumsneaker
Summary: MacReady claws out of the Antarctic winter with nothing to show for it but a few other lives, a box full of remains, and a job.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	smoke signals as a cry for help

**Author's Note:**

> OK LOL this is like... post-canon. except nauls and fuchs are alive etc etc this gets explained later on but you may have to suspension of disbelief it i'm sorry T_T
> 
> i fuck with time a bit at some portions and it's generally unclear as to what the time is. in my mind this is happening in august/september. you may interpret it differently. that's fine. i also fill backgrounds for some of them. you may disagree with these. that is also fine. if you're curious about a decision you are free to ask about it and i will be happy to respond.
> 
> oh right lol and my interpretations for ages are according to the second draft of the script here because i didn't care to look up the actors' ages at this point so yes
> 
> really all of the warnings are covered in the tags. heavy death discussion and alcoholism are the main points.
> 
> if you squint there's some gay + trans implications but it's not really overt at all lol. also i would apologizing for the judaism but i am not sorry i am jewish and this is my interpretation of these characters and so forth and so forth.
> 
> hope you enjoy!

The fires are still burning, licking high into the Antarctic sky, when there’s a low whirring noise in the distance.

MacReady’s dealt with his fair share of auditory tics, so he merely quirks his head to the side, as much as he can, and grimaces against the cold. Childs, still curled against the wall opposite him, regards him quietly, eyes half-lidded, looking on the border of sleep. Warmth is close, smoke darkening the month-long night sky overhead, but the cold is biting, and-

There’s the snap of a flare. Mac recognizes it. So does Childs, judging by the way he shifts, and the two of them look off to the midst of the base. They catch sight of a silhouette, flare in hand, waving frantically at something in the sky, and suddenly the whirring noise occurs to Mac in full force, and he’s ashamed for ever having mistaken it.

Childs says something, but the words are too muddled in MacReady’s ears to understand, and the sound of the chopper comes closer, drawn in by whoever that is waving the flare, and, well, MacReady’s head is swimming too much to remember the rest.

+

When Mac stirs back into consciousness, true consciousness, not the snatches that had been occupying his mind, it’s in what he recognizes to be the medical hospital of McMurdo.

There’s someone sitting near him, poring over some kind of notepad, and in the glaring overhead lights, it takes Mac a long moment before the glasses (different glasses, but glasses nonetheless) and the beard come into focus.

He closes his eyes, breathes out heavily. “All of that  _ shit _ , and I still died?”

Granted, the words come out more slurred than that, which is probably why the look occupying Fuchs’ face as he glances over is one of surprise and not of disapproval. “You’re up,” he says, and there’s a brief smile before Fuchs looks up, to someone Mac can’t quite see from the way he’s positioned. “He’s up!”

Oh, no. If he has to see anyone else he’s known who’s died, he might kill himself again.

Nauls comes into focus, and Mac feels a little bit like banging his head against a table, maybe. Right. Either he’s dead, and his afterlife is a fucked up mirror of Outpost #31, or he’s being ambushed by that thing. Great. Great series of events here.

The two of them exchange a look. Nauls gives Mac a tentative, nervous smile, one that makes it look like he barely knows where he is, and says, “We didn’t know. If you’d be back up any time soon, I mean. Childs’s still out.”

Fuchs glances at something else, and Mac strenuously looks over, catching sight of where Childs is similarly laid up. His body feels stiff. Not cold, though, thankfully, but too stiff to grab Fuchs by the front of his sweater and ask what in the  _ hell  _ is going on here.

He must see the murderous look in Mac’s eyes, though, because he scoots back a little, and glances again at Nauls. “Mac, I finished the blood serum test. All of us have been tested. We’re okay. We’re human. Blowing up the outpost must’ve… killed it.”

Mac stares up at Fuchs, long enough that his eyes become unfocused, and he has to blink a few times. The feeling of being safe in a room is foreign. After a moment, Mac thinks that this isn’t even safety, it’s just the absence of paranoia.

And then he glances back at Nauls, and though Mac doesn’t want this to be wrong, doesn’t  _ want _ for some piece of that thing to have lived, but he can’t quite stop himself from asking, voice icy, “How did you get out of there?”

Fuchs glances at Nauls, who diverts his gaze to the floor. He doesn’t seem quite sure of what to say. On one hand, this speaks in Nauls’ defense: it certainly would have already come up with an excuse for when Mac inevitably asked. On the other, it would have known Mac was expecting an immediate answer, and adjusted to defy those expectations, but, then, wouldn’t it have also known Mac--

“I think we should focus on something else,” Fuchs says after a second, giving Mac another tentative smile. Nauls glances at him, avoiding Mac’s eyes.

Mac wants to ask what, wants to ponder as to what in the fuck there is to talk about other than that creature, and what it did to the rest of Outpost #31, and how they’re the lucky pieces of shit who made it out.

Then there’s shuffling in the cot next to him, and Fuchs and Nauls turns, and Mac thinks, with more than a trace of sarcasm, that it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie for the moment.

+

It’s a few days later when the four survivors of the outpost are pulled as a group into one of the offices in McMurdo, and told in no uncertain terms that they’re not to spread a word of the actual events, and then three contracts are pushed out onto the table.

The man behind the desk leans back. “The Foundation doesn’t want anyone makin’ a big fuss about this until they know what to do, and the military’s inclined to agree.”

They stare at the contracts for a moment. Mac knows most of them are standing at least a foot away from each other, even in the cramped office, with the exception of Fuchs sitting quietly in the corner -- speaks to what trust those last days at the outpost fostered.

“So you’re having us sign non-disclosure agreements,” Childs says simply after a moment, and Mac looks over, sets his jaw.

The man in the chair -- must be an army man, like Garry…  _ was _ , he’s wearing similar attire -- shrugs. “You could say that. I’ll be frank with you, men, there’s no way you’re leavin’ this base until these got your John Hancocks on ‘em.”

“G-ddamn,” Nauls mutters, and Mac crosses his arms.

“There’s only three of these here,” he points out, glancing around at the others. Fuchs seems to be shrinking where he’s sitting. 

“What are we supposed to tell people?” Childs asks, and there’s a rising anger in his voice, the same kind Mac feels boiling in his stomach. “What are  _ you  _ gonna be telling their families?”

He shrugs again. “Place went up in flames, thanks to you fellas. Generator malfunction is the National Science Foundation’s official story.”

“Generator malfunction,” Mac echoes. He looks at Childs, is somewhat comforted by the fact that Childs is looking back at him with the same  _ can you believe this _ fury in his eyes. “Right. Generator malfunction. Killed eight people.”

There’s a moment of silence. The man sighs. “Christ almighty. Just sign the contracts.”

“Shouldn’t we tell the rest of the world? At least let them know somehow, in case we didn’t kill it out there?” Nauls asks, and he glances at Mac and Childs. “Seems… dangerous.”

The man is quiet for a second, and then he shifts to look intently at Fuchs.

“I think it’s best if we sign,” Fuchs says after a moment, voice tentative, quiet.

Mac looks between the three contracts on the table, and Fuchs at the chair in the corner, and it clicks. “Damn it, Fuchs.”

Fuchs shrinks in the chair once more. It’s a shitty folding one, but it seems to swallow him regardless -- Fuchs practically shoving himself down its gullet isn’t helping, either. He runs a hand through his hair, and says, voice wavering, “They’ll figure out what to do with what we found out there. I’m sure this is just a temporary measure.”

Further silence. There’s a shuffling, and Nauls leans over, signs and prints his name on the contract to the far left. MacReady gives him a long look, but it’s devoid of anger. What else are they to do?

“What about their families?” Childs says, and Mac snaps back to looking at the McMurdo man, fury reignited.

“What about them?” he asks, with a shrug.

Childs starts to say something, but catches himself, stumbling upon some realization Mac misses. Mac steps forward, plants his hands on the desk, and demands, “What the hell are you going to tell them?”

The dam breaks. The McMurdo man sits straight up, reaches below his desk, and slaps a folder onto the desk, sitting atop the unsigned contracts. “If you’re so g-ddamn concerned about it, why don’t you tell them?”

Mac has never known a limit to his stubbornness. He takes up the folder, glares back. “Maybe I will.”

The man rises to the challenge. “Fantastic. While you’re at it, here’s all of the shit the teams we sent out managed to salvage. You can return  _ this _ ,” and he reaches below his desk, drops a cardboard box that is so much smaller than it should be beside where he’d previously placed the folder, continues, “to their families as well.”

“Mac,” Fuchs murmurs, but he doesn’t bother looking back. Mac leans down, and without breaking eye contact, signs the contract nearest him, takes up the box.

Childs is the last holdout. He is now staring at MacReady, but it’s more desperate than angry, maybe. Whatever it is, he sighs, quietly, and then signs the final contract.

The man gives them possibly the most aggravating smile Mac’s ever seen on a person’s face, and Mac’s hands around the handles on the box, feeling his knuckles grow white. “I appreciate your cooperation, gentlemen,” he says, voice dripping with venom, and he carefully assembles the three into a stack before waving a hand.

Mac can hear Nauls shuffling out. Childs lingers for a moment, finally taking up the folder the man had given them, and waves it for a moment. “What is this?”

“Profiles for those fellows you shared a base with. Emergency contacts. Everything y’all need to know in order to break the news to those families you’re so concerned about.” The man leans back in his seat, and Childs sighs again as Mac hears him leaving. Mac doesn’t feel quite ready to give up glaring at the man behind the desk, though -- not until Fuchs quietly places a hand on his upper arm, and nods for the door.

As soon as the door to the office closes behind them, all of the attention is centered on MacReady.

“What the hell were you thinkin’, man?” Nauls prompts instantly, and Mac diverts his gaze to the top of the box he’s holding.  _ OUTPOST #31 - PERSONAL EFFECTS _ is scrawled in blocky handwriting on the top, and he kneels down beside the wall, much to the audible chagrin of Nauls. Fuchs sits as well, while Childs leans against the wall, staring at the folder. 

After a beat, Nauls sighs, and kneels down on the side of the box opposite Mac, and finally Childs joins them on the floor, depositing the folder beside him.

Mac carefully removes the lid of the box. It feels like he’s checking inside a coffin at a funeral, or maybe just generally like he’s doing something he isn’t supposed to; as if whatever’s left didn’t need to be shown to anyone else.

There’s not a lot. There’s some warped metal that looks like it used to be a handheld cassette player (probably couldn’t play any tapes anymore, though), Garry’s revolver (the barrel is slightly misshapen), a set of roller skates, a few knickknacks here and there that Mac doesn’t recognize, and then, at the bottom, lo and behold, his tape recorder.

Nauls doesn’t brighten as much as is expected as he withdraws the skates, turning them around in his hands. The wheels are similarly warped, and the fabric of the shoes is burnt. They look unwearable, admittedly. The three of them watch Nauls regard them with a somber expression. Mac gets it. His gut twists more with nausea upon seeing the tape recorder than any kind of nostalgia.

He replaces the skates, and then nods at the folder. “If we’re really doing this, we should make a gameplan,” he says, voice bordering on hoarse.

Mac glances at Childs and Fuchs. The question goes unaired, though the meaning behind the slow once-over is clear:  _ are you in or are you out? _

Fuchs nods, once, face resolute.

Childs takes a moment longer. He takes the folder back up in his hands, stares at the cover. Mac drops his gaze to it as well, reading the cover (OUTPOST #31 PROFILES - 1982 WINTER SEASON) over and over as he replaces the lid of the box.

“May as well,” Childs sighs finally, and he sets down the folder on the box before opening the cover.

+

When they land in LAX (from Sydney, mind you, coming out of Christchurch from McMurdo, which isn’t a pleasant set of flights by any means), Fuchs stops them to show the map he’d gotten.

“So,” he starts, and Mac knows he’s disgruntled to have been stopped before they can even get to a hotel, but Childs nods for Fuchs to go ahead, “it’d make most sense to stop by Palmer’s address, first. It’s near Los Angeles. After that, we’ve got Norris’ contact up in Stanford-”

“Stanford?” Mac interrupts, furrowing his brow. “I thought Norris worked at Caltech.”

Fuchs nods impatiently. “Right, right, but the address he listed for emergency contact is in Stanford.” He pauses, and fumbles for the folder in his backpack to flip to Norris’ page and show them. Most of the page has been painstakingly covered up with black marker. After seeing Garry’s papers and noticing that these were pretty much complete psychological profiles as well as references for contact information, they’d each taken their own files and taken the time to cross out everyone else’s. Removes the temptation of snooping, the luxury of having something to blame their actions onto.

Fuchs replaces the folder as he continues. “Clark’s contact address is in Oregon, so we can make that our stop after Stanford. After that, we’ve got… pretty much nothing until Kansas.”

“Garry,” Childs fills in, and Fuchs nods. Mac’s brain is lagging on the mention of Clark.

“Right. Garry’s is in Kansas. And then there’s Bennings’ emergency contact in southern Illinois, and then, uh… southeast until we hit Atlanta. That’s Windows. We’ve got… Rockefeller. New York. And then, uh, it’s just… Copper. Near Boston.” 

Fuchs looks sad, now. Mac rests a hand on his shoulder for a moment, but finds himself unwilling and unable to offer any more comfort than this.

“I’ve got family in LA. Y’all can speak to Palmer’s contact. I’m going to tell them what happened,” Nauls says, and everyone immediately tenses.

“Not the truth?” Fuchs says, but there’s something more pressing on Mac’s mind, and he abruptly drops his hand from Fuchs’ shoulder.

“I thought we agreed we weren’t gonna handle any family business of our own until we settled this back at McMurdo,” Childs points out, and Mac nods. Funny, how Childs looks as exhausted as Mac feels at the agreement. Funny, how two people nearly freezing to death together can be grounds for a stronger bond. Funny, how this bond feels to be the equivalent of two bodies happening to rot side by side.

“We’re already in Los Angeles, man, what do you want me to do?”

“Not leaving the rest of our sights would be a start,” Mac suggests, crossing his arms. Nauls cocks his head, purses his lips irritatedly.

“You still think we might be those things,” Nauls says. “Fuchs finished the blood test, Mac, that puts all of us in the clear.”

“And what if Fuchs isn’t?” Mac counters, and Fuchs’ shoulders slump as he carefully folds the map back up. “As far as I’m concerned, none of you are  _ safe _ until we’re through with this.”

“A couple more weeks is enough to prove it?” Childs says, and Mac glares at him. “Nauls’s right, Mac. Either do another damn test or let it go. We’re not at the outpost anymore. Nothing keeping us here except our word.”

MacReady considers this for a long moment, and when he says nothing one way or another, Fuchs nods for the way to baggage claim. “Come on,” he murmurs, and they get moving again.

Mac ruminates on the fact that he might have just let his guard down long enough to bring that thing right to the rest of the world, and he stares holes into Fuchs’ back as they walk.

+

The box of personal effects finds a home beneath luggage in the back of the rental, celestial bodies searing holes into it through the rear window, but no one knows what to do with it. They complain about it in vague terms, referring to that which takes up too much room in the trunk without ever putting a name to it. It feels cruel, though -- cruel to throw out the remnants of their lives, so in the car it remains.

The hotel rooms are a set of two, connected by a door that MacReady insists they leave open (something that’s only agreed upon when they realize with clear irritation that he isn’t budging on this), with two beds in each. When the topic of rooming comes up, Mac sits back, and finds he’s been assigned with Fuchs. That’s fine. He’ll sleep with a lighter below the pillow, if he sleeps at all.

+

Nauls, indeed, does not come along to Palmer’s emergency contact.

Mac ends up wishing he’d also declined to go, because when Childs pulls up the rental to the address, it’s a fucking dive bar.

“Of course Palmer pulls this shit,” Mac mutters darkly, and Fuchs double and triple checks the address in the files before shaking his head.

“This is the place.”

The three of them sit in silence for a long moment, staring at the building. It doesn’t look like it’s standing very well, reminds Mac of the places he used to frequent down in Florida while he was still working for Hughes. There’s a couple of vehicles parked around the establishment, but no indication that this is in any way related to Palmer.

“We should go in,” Childs says eventually, rubbing at his eyes with the palms of his hands. “See if there’s actually anything there or if he was just… messing with the Foundation.”

Mac groans, but opens the door, and slides out. Fuchs follows a moment later, and then Childs turns off the car and shuffles out after them.

They head inside, and the place is more or less empty. Fair, given it is a Monday afternoon. The neon signs hanging on the walls promote a variety of liquors, and there’s a single bartender, hair greasy and slowly cleaning the countertop with a rag. He glances up at their entrance, sighs.

Mac leads the approach up to the bar. “We’re looking for someone who might know a Palmer,” he says, loud enough that the few other patrons at other ends of the bar look over.

The bartender looks between the three of them. “Alright,” he says, slowly, and then calls over his shoulder for another person, following it up with, “Got some dudes looking for someone.”

He moves along to refill another customer’s glass, and Mac settles his hands on the bartop.

“This is bullshit,” Childs murmurs, and Mac has to slowly nod in agreement. What a fucking joke. And of course it was Palmer. Fucking Palmer.

A woman comes out of the backroom, wiping her hands off with a towel. She heads for the three of them, sending a dark look at the bartender. She doesn’t waste any time, launches straight into, “What do you want?”

“We’re looking for someone who might know a Palmer,” Mac repeats verbatim, more clearly this time, drawing himself up.

The woman -- owner, presumably, possibly -- furrows her brow. “And what do you want with Palmer?”

“We have news,” Fuchs explains, “About- about Palmer. We’re looking for someone who’ll want to hear it.”

The owner seems to relax. “You’ll wanna talk to the Barbarians. I don’t know when they’ll be by next, but they tend to redirect people here.”

Fuchs asks first. “Barbarians?”

“They come through here often enough. I’d say give it about a week,” she answers vaguely, waving a hand. She deposits the towel on the bar. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“There’s no way to talk to them now?”

She studies Fuchs for a long moment, and then as sarcastically as Mac can imagine any one person looking around, she looks around. After this exaggerated motion, she leans over the bar ever so slightly, and says, in an even voice, “No.”

Another beat of silence. Fuchs drops his eyes to the floor, shuffles his feet.

“C’mon,” Mac mutters, and they make their way back out of the bar.

As soon as they pass the threshold, Childs speaks up. “Barbarians might be a set of bikers. Palmer mentioned something like that.”

“You didn’t think that was worth bringing up before we went inside?” Mac says, more confrontationally than he intends to, and Childs narrows his eyes in response. The disapproval in the air is tangible. Mac stays quiet for a second, and then continues, “May as well stay a few days longer than we meant to. If they don’t swing around by Friday, we’ll consider this said and done.”

“Fine by me,” Childs answers. Fuchs nods, doesn’t say anything.

They head back for the car.

+

Later that evening, as the three of them are playing cards at the hotel table in Nauls and Childs’ room, ashtray and bottle side-by-side near the card deck, the door opens, and Nauls steps in.

He’s quiet, seems like he’s carrying some kind of weight on his shoulders. They stare at him expectantly, but he doesn’t say anything, not until he’s grabbed a chair from the corner of the room and has pulled it up to the other side of the table. Fuchs shuffles another hand from the deck, passes it to Nauls, and they play for a few minutes, the only sound being the white noise the television in Fuchs and Mac’s room plays and the shuffling of cards.

“I didn’t tell them,” Nauls says.

Fuchs looks up. “About what?”

Nauls shrugs. “Any of it. Not even that anyone died. I didn’t…” he trails off, stares around the room. His eyes catch on the mirror by the door. “They would’ve wanted to do something. We don’t have the time for it.”

Mac considers Nauls, considers this. They don’t have the time to mourn. Jesus. Isn’t that what this whole trip is for? “We couldn’t get to Palmer’s contact today,” he admits, and Nauls sighs, lowering his cards as he rubs at his face with a hand.

“I told my folks I was headed out tomorrow morning,” he says, and for a moment he doesn’t look like someone Mac knows, but just someone who’s brushed death and doesn’t know what to do with the aftermath. Mac glances at the others at the table, and finds their faces devoid of the same lack of familiarity -- Fuchs seems uncomfortable, and Childs is peering back at Nauls with something like sympathy. “Guess we can all check it out tomorrow.”

“Might not get to them tomorrow, either,” Mac says, and Nauls gives a ghost of a laugh, avoids looking at the other players gathered around the table.

The television in the other room is announcing the results of some sports game.

“I told them the generator was failing, so they pulled us out, sent us home early.” Nauls is staring at the mirror again. “They asked if the mechanics couldn’t fix it, and I said no, and it wasn’t a lie, ‘cause technically the damn generator wasn’t there to be fixed.” He sets down his hand. “But they said that that radio operator must’ve finally got in touch, ‘cause I’d told them when I wrote that he sucked at it, and I had to say  _ yeah _ , even though it wasn’t true.” As he speaks, he moves to the bed his belongings are sitting on top of, and removes the pillowcases. The motion is delicate, as if he’s doing something sacred. “And they asked how everyone else was doin’, and I told them I didn’t know.” He takes one of the pillowcases, moves to the entryway, and carefully drapes it over the mirror. “And they asked where I was going, and I told them I didn’t know, that we were just seein’ how it went.” He steps back, studies that covering, and when he finds it sufficient, he nods, turns back to the bed. “And then they asked what I was gonna do next, and I told ‘em I’d see.” His words are getting clipped. His voice sounds hoarse. He moves to the bathroom with the other pillowcase, leaves the door open as he presumably covers the other mirror. “And then we didn’t talk about it for the rest of the day.”

There’s the sound of running water. It drowns out the buzz of the television. There’s quiet, and then Fuchs asks, as softly as he thinks he can while still being heard, “Did it feel normal?”

The tap turns off. Nauls doesn’t reenter the greater room. “No.”

An expression almost like mourning occurs to Fuchs, and he brings his cards closer to his face, as if they’re still playing, or perhaps as if he’s looking for some kind of answer. When Mac looks to Childs, he finds the other man staring back at him, and the sentiment seems to be shared: normalcy wasn’t in the cards for them the moment that dog waltzed onto the base.

+

The next day, all four of them return to the bar. When there aren’t any motorcycles outside, they send Childs in to confirm with the owner if his suspicions concerning the Barbarians were correct, and when he comes back out, he nods, and there’s something almost like amusement in the car at the notion that Palmer had, indeed, been a biker.

Childs gets back in, and they sit there for a moment, each privately having their joy at this image, and then Childs cracks a grin at the other passengers, as if he can’t help himself, and it’s like something breaks. They start laughing, all of them (though Mac tries not to do anything more than snort), because, Christ, what a relief it is that pleasantly ridiculous things can still be true.

+

They stop to pick things up that night, and then Mac heads out to buy the equivalent of a low-shelf bar’s stock, all of which he takes care to pile into a duffel when he gets back, keeping it out of Fuchs’ sight, who’s laying on the other bed, staring up at the ceiling.

A few hours later, when the lights are out, the only illumination in the room being moonlight jutting in through the small slit in the curtain, Mac is unsurprised to find he can’t sleep.

He isn’t sure how Fuchs is faring, so he elects to stay quiet, almost regretting his decision to have them book rooms this way, though Nauls did close the door between the two before turning in. He misses his shack. This realization feels like a strike to the face, and he decides it isn’t too early to make use of his stock. He slips out of the room, takes the duffel, and props open the door of the rental car, placing the bag in the passenger seat.

When he’s had enough that reality feels fuzzy at best but he’s still largely in control of how quietly he moves, he creeps back in, tucks the bag below the bed, and sits back on it.

“Mac?” Fuchs prompts, quietly.

Mac groans, and lays down, facing away from Fuchs and towards the door. He stares at the moonlight coming in for a long time, long enough that he hopes Fuchs has given up, because he  _ really _ doesn’t want to address all those questions that must be burning in the biologist’s brain about the outpost, before answering, just as softly, “What?”

There’s another beat. The sound of bedsheets shuffling. “Nothing,” Fuchs says.

He feels almost bad, and spends the rest of the night before his brain elects to knock him out for an hour or two thinking about it.

+

When they show up to the bar the next day, there’s a collection of bikes set up outside, with a set of men wearing familiar jean vests and passing a cigarette between them. Mac figures this must be it, and the four of them step out of the car. None of them speak. There’s nothing to say.

They move inside. It would be more meaningful if they looked like a unit, but instead Mac’s pretty sure they just look sad.

There’s more folks inside than on Monday, and the owner is at the bar, speaking to one of the Barbarians. She looks over as the four of them enter, and the man she’s talking to calls, “You’re the fellas who know somethin’ about Palmer?”

Nauls glances around at the others. Mac sets his jaw, and nods, leads the way all the way to the bar. “We were at the research outpost with him,” Mac explains as he approaches, and the man chuckles a bit.

“Yeah,” he says, and he takes a drink from the glass he’s holding. Mac glances between them -- Nauls and Fuchs and Childs -- and finds that everyone here looks equally at a loss for words.

“There was an incident,” Fuchs starts, and Mac finds it privately ridiculous that none of the three who saw Palmer, or what had once been Palmer, die are taking the reins here, but also can’t summon the strength to take over himself. “A bad one. He’s passed.”

Mac then finds that Fuchs probably shouldn’t break the news to anyone else. That was terrible.

The man doesn’t seem too taken aback, though he does sigh, dropping his chin into a palm. “Damn,” he murmurs after a second. He stares at the bartop for a long moment, then looks back up at them. “Shit. Alright. That all?”

Mac hears the sigh Childs gives through his nose.  _ That all.  _ Mac says, with a bit more fire in his voice than is probably necessary, “You guys were the only people he listed to contact, you know.”

The man quirks a brow, and then he glances at the owner, who’s clearly been listening in, given the solemn expression on her face. “Grab a round for these guys. On me,” he says, and she nods, starts preparing four glasses.

It’s almost suffocating, really, the situation as a whole. Mac’s pretty sure no one else drinks save for him and Palmer’s alleged contact, which is fine enough by Mac.

+

They pack up the next morning.

Childs takes the driver’s seat, and Fuchs sits beside him, map propped open in his lap.

It’s a several hour drive up to Stanford. They plan to stop at the listed address at some point in the late afternoon and then make headway towards Oregon, hopefully find a more comprehensive map up to Clark’s address. Before that, though, is Norris’ contact.

None of them really know what to expect. At least, Mac doesn’t, and Nauls seems similarly at a loss for words at the other end of the backseat. Childs doesn’t speak, not until they’re approaching Santa Clara, at which point he glances around the rest of the car.

“You have any idea what this’ll be like?” he asks.

“Never talked to Norris much about his life before,” Mac murmurs, and Nauls nods in agreement. Fuchs considers for a moment longer, and then shakes, leaving them to another leg of the drive in silence.

By the time they get to the postal code of Norris’ contact, everyone seems antsy. The feeling of not knowing what comes next seems to permeate the vehicle -- a kind of anticipation, a kind of anxiety. Childs brings the car to a stop, and the air seems to buzz with everything no one wants to say.

This location, thankfully, is a house, with a car in the driveway. There are other houses around it. This is somehow sobering. These are places, close to other places, close enough that you can cross a lawn, or a kid can cross the street, or a dog can skip past a sprinkler to get to your front door. It’s alarming. It’s relieving. Mac feels a well of emotions in his gut, and he isn’t sure which one is rising to the top.

“Who wants to explain? Not Fuchs,” Mac says, adding the second part as a quick afterthought, and Childs sighs.

“We’re going with generator failure?” he asks skeptically, and since no one has any better ideas, Mac nods. Childs looks around at the three of them, and then seems to set his shoulders, takes on some burden. He doesn’t have to answer the question. They get out of the car.

It’s like a funeral procession up the door of the house. In many ways, Mac supposes it is.

Childs makes his way to the front of the group, raps his knuckles against the door. There’s some shuffling inside, and then it opens, and there’s someone who’s clearly another professor. They’re around Fuchs’ height (which is to say, shorter than almost all of them), and have a set of glasses perched on their nose.

“Good afternoon,” they greet, sounding curious, confused.

There’s a pause. “You’re Vance Norris’ emergency contact?” Childs asks, more out of confirmation than anything else.

The professor briefly perks up, and then takes another look at their faces, and deflates. “I suppose so. Why? Did something happen?”

MacReady tucks his hands in his pockets, looks at the ground. He can’t get the image of Norris’ chest splitting open out of his head. He hears Childs’ answer, distantly: “We’re sorry to have to tell you. There was a generator failure at the research outpost he was stationed at.”

It feels very suffocating out, suddenly, even though it’s getting into autumn.

“Ah,” they reply, after a long moment. Mac glances up at them, and recognizes the way he’s felt for weeks reflected back at him: complete loss. Not in the grief sense, but in the sense of having no idea what to do next. The grief hasn’t set in yet, he thinks; not for them, and not for him. It’s just shock. Just the feeling of finding that the road ahead of you has given way, fallen in on itself.

His vision grows unfocused, and he wonders if maybe he’s projecting.

“Are… will there be any remains sent back?”

Christ. What would they even send back? Here’s a head, don’t mind the appendages, here’s a body, don’t mind the hole in it, here’s the image of a person, warped, melded into something inhuman, something grotesque, don’t mind the viscera.

Childs swallows. “I’m afraid not. Largely burnt by the fires.”

The moment stretches on.

“We had plans,” they say, suddenly, and Mac doesn’t want to hear it. He wants to move back to the car. Take a seat. Take a drink. His feet, however, have other ideas, rooted to the ground as they are. “The trip was a break. A waiting period.”

No one knows what to say.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Fuchs settles on, finally, and it feels like a slight more than a consolation.

The professor nods, though. “Thank you for telling me.”

The door closes. Another door closes, somewhere else -- Mac feels it. He thinks it must be the door at the other end of the hole in the road.

They make their way back to the rental car in silence. As Childs opens the door, something occurs to him, and he stops, moves around to the trunk. MacReady watches this with a knit in his brow, unsure of what he’s intending to do.

Childs opens the trunk. “We’ve got remains,” he says, “they just aren’t bodies.”

Oh.  _ Oh. _ Mac joins him at the trunk, and Nauls and Fuchs climb back out to watch as well. Childs carefully pulls out the cardboard box, opens the top, and peers at the contents.

“Anyone know what in here belongs to who?”

The four of them study the knick-knacks carefully. There’s Palmer’s Walkman, but they’ve already made their stop with the Barbarians, and Mac doesn’t feel particularly compelled to return. After a second, Fuchs reaches in, and takes up a bit of malformed gold. It used to be a wedding ring, judging by the way it’s shaped and the Hebrew characters lovingly inscribed on the interior, but it’s positively unwearable now. Fuchs turns it carefully in his hands, breathes out. “This was Copper’s. He didn’t… wear it, just left it in the room, but…” he trails off, frowns, and sets the ring carefully back down into the box.

There’s a cigar case, as well, sitting near Mac’s tape recorder. The leather has largely burnt away, whatever insignia decayed by the explosions at the base, but the letters G.B. remain in tact and embroidered near the top. Somehow, the knowledge isn’t surprising. Of course he smoked cigars. Mac purses his lips, ignores further thinking about it by withdrawing a larger container from the box. It’s plastic, melted and warped, and when he flips open the top of it, there’s cassette tapes inside. Tape (suitably adorned with burn marks) is sticking to the interior of the lid, reading, “VANCE’S PICKS”.

“Norris,” Mac murmurs. He flips it back closed without bothering to read what the contents of the tapes are. He doesn’t need to know the music taste of a dead man. “One of you want to run it up?”

When there’s no reply, Childs sighs, and takes the box from MacReady’s hands. He heads back up to the door, knocks politely, and when the professor reappears at the door, they exchange a quiet conversation before Childs offers them the box. They turn it over for a moment, open it, and then bring a hand to their face, slump down a little.

Mac stops watching at this point. “Let’s get back in the car, get ready to go.”

Childs joins them shortly, and wordlessly starts the car and leaves.

+

At some point, what must be hours later, Childs asks if they want to stop at a hotel.

There’s no response. It is dark out. Mac had hardly noticed the time passing. Fuchs and Nauls must be out -- Mac can make out Nauls twitching uncomfortably in what seems to be rather restless sleep, curled up at the other end of the backseat, while Fuchs’ head is resting against the window, completely slack.

Childs looks back, makes eye contact with Mac, purses his lips. “Can you drive?” he asks, and Mac nods.

It takes them another few moments to make the swap, having to exit the highway and pull into a gas station. Mac gets out, quietly, and lightly shakes Fuchs’s shoulder awake as Childs lowers the volume of the radio station and climbs out of the driver’s seat.

“C’mon. Backseat, bud,” Mac murmurs, as gently as he can, and Fuchs blearily blinks and clambers out without protest. By the time Childs and Mac have moved to their sides of the car, MacReady tucking himself into the driver’s seat and Childs into the passenger’s seat, Fuchs is already back out.

Childs takes the maps that had been stored in the glove compartment, makes sure they get back on the highway alright, and then it’s quiet again.

Mac doesn’t ask why he swapped. He doesn’t seem to sleep, just stares through the window. Only moment of not being able to drive is when he rolls down the window and breezes through a smoke quicker than Mac thinks should be possible. This, however, is fine by Mac. No use pulling at loose threads.

+

They make it about halfway through Oregon, having emerged into the colder part of the country, before tension begins to simmer over. It’s during a meal at McDonald’s (chosen with heated debate from Nauls), which they’re eating in the car so as to not ignite Mac’s paranoia when a patron looks at them for too long, when the dreaded question is asked.

“What, er… if you don’t mind, what did happen… after I left?” Fuchs is stepping around the real question, which is what happened to Norris, what happened to Copper, what happened to Clark, to Windows, to Blair-

The three of them all look to Fuchs, and then Childs and Mac look to Nauls.

“You didn’t tell him?” Mac asks, and Nauls shrugs, draws himself in. 

“I didn’t wanna think about it,” he answers, and Mac’s fists clench, but he catches a frenzied look in Nauls’ eyes, and there’s not enough anger in the world to summon any at Nauls for this. Who would want to think about it?

“We’ll fill you in later, Fuchs,” Childs says, thereby proving Mac’s thesis, and Fuchs nods, and the issue is dropped.

+

They wind up driving until they hit Clark’s hometown. It doesn’t feel necessary to stop -- Childs and Mac (and, on a few instances when both of them have hit their limit on no sleep, Nauls) manage to subsist on swapping driver seat (Fuchs reveals at some point that he’d never learned, and does not have a license), and this feels, at least to Mac, like the worst news to break. He wouldn’t say he  _ regrets  _ Clark’s death, but, well, he isn’t…  _ proud _ of it.

The only thing in the box reminiscent of Clark had been a wooden dog whistle. It used to hang on twine, form a necklace, but that must have burnt up. Mac didn’t want to offer anyone that. So instead he’d brought up the switchblade, still secure in his jacket pocket, and no one had argued, though Mac fears it holds more violent connotations than he’d enjoy receiving from someone informing him a someone he’d been close to had been killed ( _ murdered _ ). Still. The dog whistle makes him feel a bit ill, so they leave it in the box, and settle on the blade instead.

It takes another bit of driving through the town, involving several wrong turns, before they land at the actual address, going off of the numbers on the mailboxes. It’s evening, now, Mac thinks: the day is waning, low sun shimmering off the dew on the grass. They’re in a more rural part of town -- larger plots of land, more wildlife. This house, in particular, is complete with two kids kicking a rubber soccer ball back and forth across the lawn, bundled up in warmer clothes, as a large dog runs between them. After a moment of them sitting there, Mac notices another dog, smaller, running up towards the car. One of the kids watches it, notices the car, and kicks the ball back towards the other before turning and heading for the house.

It all feels very idyllic. Mac stares at the front door closing.

“You should head in without me,” he says.

Childs and Nauls exchange a glance. Fuchs furrows his brow, looks confused.

“I think it’s best to deal with it, man,” Nauls tells him, sounding awkward, because Mac figures that there isn’t a good way to say  _ you have to confront the fact that you did kill someone, in self-defense or otherwise _ .

The kid comes back out of the house, this time with some kind of older man, possibly a father, in tow. Mac keeps staring at the door.

The father approaches the car. Childs rolls down the window when he gestures for it, and he eases his arms onto the window, gives them a smile. “What brings you folks out here?”

There’s a pause, and then Mac answers, “We’re from U.S. Outpost #31. Got news.”

This sparks recognition. His eyes light, briefly, and he gives the car another look. Something catches. The light dies. “Guessing it’s not good news.”

Fuck. What an understatement. “No, sir,” Mac answers.

The father leans back, claps his hands against the passenger side’s door lightly. “Why don’t you boys join us for dinner? News is best delivered over a meal, I’ve learned.”

_ No _ does not feel like an applicable answer. There’s some murmurs of agreement, not from Mac himself, and they get out of the car, follow him back up to the house. As they walk, Mac slips the switchblade from his pocket, presses it into Fuchs’ hand instead. He doesn’t want to be the one to give it, figures he may not be present enough to do so. The other kid brings up the party, the two dogs trailing after her.

The father knocks off his shoes before stepping inside, so they follow suit, though the child forgets, and the larger dog shakes off moisture after the door snaps shut behind it. Mac stares at the dog. Something about it. Childs knocks shoulders with Mac as he peels off his coat, stirring Mac back to the present, and he shoulders off his jacket.

They’re led into the dining area, where another parent, probably Clark’s mother, is carefully setting out an array with the help of another sibling. He’s wearing a sweatshirt for the University of Oregon, a fact which Mac notes with a pang of what would most closely be called guilt. The mother looks up at their entry, and the sibling kneels down to receive the dog happily, setting the plates in a stack on the table.

“Guests?” she asks, and the father nods.

“From that research base,” he says, and she looks surprised, then concerned, then goes back to the table.

“We’ve got enough.” She goes on to explain, gesturing at the sibling, that he’s visiting for the weekend, that they’re happy to have guests -- especially on Shabbat. They always make too much, she says, even for them.

Mac notices, somewhere in this conversation, how silent and withdrawn Childs and Nauls are. They keep chancing looks at Mac and at each other, while Fuchs awkwardly chats with Clark’s mother. He offers to help her set the rest of the table as Clark’s father goes to get drinks and his younger sibling goes to call for the two other children.

The three of them are left in the dining room. Mac runs a hand through his hair, gets frustrated when he sees how badly it’s shaking.

“Dinner with the family of the man you murdered,” Childs murmurs, barely loud enough to be heard. Nauls scoots back a little at the word, though he doesn’t say it harshly, or with any venom -- it’s a statement. One of fact. One that can’t be contested.

Mac is nothing if not stubborn. “It was self-defense.”

“He had a scalpel,” Childs points out, “You had a gun.”

Mac shrugs.

People begin reentering, then, and Clark’s father pulls out chairs for the four of them, and Mac thinks he doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t deserve to break bread in this room with these people, but then the kiddush is being uttered and dinner is being served.

There’s a period of withdrawal. Clark’s family discusses things amongst themselves, such as school and work, and if ignoring the elephant in the room is deliberate, Mac can’t pick up on as much. Mac doesn’t particularly pay attention, either -- he just stares at the food on his plate without touching it. Childs seems to have decided not to eat as well, given his plate is empty, and Nauls is hardly even picking at his own serving, but Fuchs is fitting in about as well as he can fit in.

Eventually, attention is diverted back to the four of them, and a silence falls over the table. It takes a second, but Clark’s younger sibling seems to take some kind of hint, for he gets up, and says to the two younger children, “You guys wanna eat in the living room?”

This must be a rare treat, for the response is immediate, and moments later, it’s just the four survivors of Outpost #31 and Clark’s parents.

“So you’re those folks from that research base,” the father says, and though Mac doesn’t make a habit of doing so, he finds himself shrinking in his seat.

“That we are,” Fuchs responds carefully, sighing a quiet sigh as he sets down his fork. “We had some, um… unfortunate news.”

Clark’s parents exchange a mournful look.

When no one else speaks up (Mac pointedly ignores the desperate look he receives, while Childs has his face in his hands and Nauls looks like he feels sick), Fuchs stammers, and then goes on, “There was a generator failure at the station. It- it caused a good deal of damage.” He pauses. “It killed your son.”

Mac closes his eyes. Somehow, the lie feels even worse here. He feels anger, disgust wrenching his gut; he’s upset. He doesn’t know how to deal with this. He thinks about why they’re here at all, and then about the NDAs, and then about everyone they’ve yet to speak to, and then about how maybe it would be best to just give up. Call this off. Surely they’d be contacted eventually, if only at the end of the original commissioned season, and the four of them wouldn’t have to go through this. They could go their separate ways.

He realizes he’s missed more of the conversation. Clark’s parents seem to be asking questions. Mac abruptly stands up, mutters, “Excuse me,” and leaves.

Mac is back at the car within minutes. He turns it on, sits in the driver’s seat, and stares ahead at the road. The sun has set, now: all that’s out here is the weight of it all, almost visible in the dim moonlight and the streetlamps.

When he looks back at the house, he sees the silhouette of that dog again, sniffing around the lawn, pawing at the grass. He moves to reach into his pocket for his matchbook, finds it is not there, and it occurs to him that he’d left his jacket inside.

Mac watches the dog. He watches it so intently that he doesn’t notice people are coming out of the house until the passenger side door is opening, and Fuchs practically throws Mac’s jacket at him from where he’s slipping into the backseat before snapping the seat belt buckle in place. The motion is abrupt and furious, and when Mac glances across at Childs, he finds Childs won’t look back at him.

“There’s a motel a few miles away,” Fuchs says, quietly, voice the equivalent of water boiling on a stovetop with the heat behind it.

MacReady obediently starts the car, and begins the drive.

After they’ve been moving for about five minutes of Mac trying to ignore the tension in the car by focusing on obeying traffic laws to a T, Fuchs says, in that same scathing tone, “What was that?”

There’s no response. Fuchs sighs, so deeply and shakily that Mac glances in the rear view mirror, mostly to make sure the road behind them is still clear, but partially to make sure Fuchs isn’t crying.

“I killed Clark,” Mac says after a moment, and it’s the first time he’s said it with any clarity. It solidifies, becomes less of a notion of culpability and an undeniable truth.

Fuchs, however, laughs. It isn’t a real laugh, to his credit, just a sort of stuttering, breathy laugh, but his disbelief is clear. “It wouldn’t have been Clark, Mac.”

“He was still human,” Childs fills in. 

Mac pushes his foot down on the gas. The gauge slips over the speed limit.

“Ah,” Fuchs says, and he apparently decides that’s all he needs to know.

They reach the hotel within a few more minutes, and turn in for sleep after purchasing rooms from the dreary-looking clerk with little fanfare and no talking.

+

They take off early the next morning, tiptoeing around the issue.

Mac doesn’t want to talk. No one else seems to break the silence, as well, so they move around each other with that same tension. 

There’s a moment, one night, probably around three in the morning, when Mac is in the driver’s seat. Childs is in the passenger’s, clearly asleep, and the backseat is silent. It becomes almost overwhelming. Mac feels his chest tighten, and after granting a cursory glance behind him at Fuchs and Nauls, he takes the next exit he sees and parks in a Wal-Mart parking lot and gets out of the car. He paces around the vehicle a few times, unsure of what to do, and then walks down to the edge of the parking lot. He takes a seat on the edge of the concrete, puts his head into his hands, and breathes.

Fuck. Alright. Jesus Christ.

Mac almost finds himself crying -- keyword being  _ almost _ . Mostly, he just sits there, soles of his boots tucked against the pavement, face tucked into his palms, knees tucked into his chest. The streetlights feel overbearing.

He has no words. It’s kind of pathetic, really, having no words after all of that, having no ability to speak to the reporters after the big win. Because he did, he won, humanity won. It’s dead. It’s dead, and so are all of those other people: the Swedes ( _ Norwegians, Mac,  _ a helpful voice in his head reminds him, and Mac feels like he’s going to vomit) Mac never met and the men he feels he’d hardly known.

They still have five others.

He goes over the list in his head: there’s Garry in Kansas, Bennings in Illinois, Windows in Georgia, Blair in New York, and Copper in Massachusetts. The thought process catches, for a moment, on Blair. Blair. Blair, who was locked in a shed, turned into something that wasn’t him.

He can’t even begin to broach the others. His head hurts.

When he looks up, there’s someone leaning against the car, eyes glued to the ground. Mac seizes up, and then relaxes when he sees it’s Nauls. He pauses for a long moment, and then gets to his feet, and approaches the car once more. Nauls looks up, greets him with a solemn expression.

“This ain’t Kansas,” Nauls says.

“No,” Mac says, “It ain’t.”

They stand, for a second, in that parking lot. It’s quiet. There should be stars overhead. There were, at the base, but here it’s just the streetlights.

This, surprisingly enough, is more reassuring than anything else.

Mac breaks the silence. “I killed Clark.” 

“Yeah,” Nauls answers, “You did.”

Another pause. “You survived Blair.”

“Yeah,” Nauls answers, “I did.”

He wants to ask how. He wants to ask, just to know, just to understand how you see death (worse, maybe, than death) barrelling towards you, and how you simply sidestep it. He wants to understand. Mac wants to understand, he wants to mimic it, he wants to get out of the way of the danger for once instead of just weathering it.

Maybe that isn’t fair. Mac casts a sidelong glance at Nauls, and thinks he looks as worn down as anyone else.

And then, of course, Mac thinks that  _ that _ isn’t fair. No one should have to weather it, any of it.

“You regret it?” Mac asks, instead of something easy to answer.

Nauls’ shoulders slump. There’s a drawn out pause here, like he’s thinking, and then, finally, quietly, “You want me to drive?”

Mac nods. He climbs into the backseat, and falls asleep almost the instant Nauls pulls out of the parking lot.

+

It’s another couple days of driving. Mac takes himself out of the driver’s rotation for the time being, relegating himself to the backseat as Childs and Nauls trade off the wheel. They stop at one motel, and the stay consists of the same silence that’s been haunting them the past few days.

Nauls is in the passenger seat while Childs drives when the song comes on. It’s been playing a few times, seems to be new -- the radios are all over it. And Mac would be the first to admit: it’s catchy!

So the song comes on, and it’s already moderately stuck in their heads by virtue of playing frequently when the radio is on, and Nauls glances around at the other three of them. Mac figures it’s to make sure they’re awake, because a moment later, he’s turning the volume dial up as the vocals start.

“Come on, Eileen!” Nauls calls with it, and Mac feels a smile tug at the edges of his lips. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Fuchs sitting up straighter as Childs shoots Nauls a confused look. Nauls doesn’t respond, just keeps humming along; the obnoxious aspect of it seems intentional. Like he’s trying to wear them down.

It gets to Mac quicker than he’d care to admit. He starts humming as well, though he doesn’t join in the vocals, and Fuchs tenses in what seems like alarm. After the next belt of  _ come on, Eileen! _ (which Nauls happily vocalizes), Childs joins in, silently mouthing along with the lyrics. And then Fuchs gives in, and they’re sharing in this instance of noise. The actual get muddled by the four of them singing their own interpretations, but at least it’s being muddled together, which Mac figures is campy to think, so he shoves it out of his head. 

They aren’t friends so much as people dumped into the same shitty circumstances. For the moment, though, they can act the part.

When the song ends, they fall back into silence, though it is significantly more comfortable than it’s been ever since the dinner.

+

They get to Garry’s zip code around evening. The sun hangs low, but the ground is flat in every direction -- there’s no escaping the sunset, however fast they drive. The sky takes on orange hues as it gets later and the area melts from urban center to suburb to rural plain, and then they’re in the midst of some county with grass that brushes the horizon.

Eventually, the roads stop being marked, and they stop at a gas station, sending Mac in to pay for the tank refill and ask if the clerk knows where they need to go.

The gas station is dreary, seems built on shaky boards and cracked foundations. Mac steps inside, and the bell over the door rings, and the clerk, an older man with a cap advertising some company or another, looks up.

Mac forks over the money. He asks about the roads, and gets some kind of directions. When the clerk asks why they’re headed that way, Mac forces a smile, and answers, “Saying goodbye.”

He leaves.

The road they find themselves on, some ten minutes later, is completely devoid of houses. There are the frames of some structures, and fences, which are rotting with time, but nothing intact, nothing to signal anyone lives here. Childs drives them up and down it twice before Fuchs sees something, because he frantically waves a hand in signal to stop, and then opens the door and bumbles out of the car before it’s even at a complete halt.

The other three follow moments later, engine still running. Fuchs is patting away some of the underbrush at the side of the road, and then there’s a glimmer of faded red: a mailbox.

They study it for a moment. The name GARRY is painted at the bottom of the mailbox, chipped with time.

MacReady steps carefully through the brush, out to the land beyond it and to the outline of a house behind it. The closer he gets, the more he sees: this was once something. There was something here, once, this isn’t unfinished, it’s just… abandoned. There’s no furniture left in the structure, just glass and wood and cloth and tools, and a few scattered slats of some fences lining the soil like uneven embroidery.

There’s the crunching of grass behind him. He looks around, and sees Childs and Fuchs -- Nauls is back by the car, staring at the road.

“Nothing left here,” Childs says. It’s a statement of the obvious, sure, but Mac feels the weight of it. He wonders, briefly, if they’ll ever get to not be tired again.

“What do we do?” Fuchs asks. It’s close to a whimper, really; he’s staring at the frame of a house like he’s just had all of the wind knocked out of him.

Mac glances up at the sky. It isn’t dark out, though it’s getting there. He looks back down, back at the house, and studies it. His eyes catch on a shovel, discarded by the side of the concrete foundation.

“Do we still have his revolver?”

Fuchs thinks for a moment, and then turns back for the car. Mac moves for the shovel, reaches to pick it up, feels the weight for a moment. It’s old. Some of the wood has been eaten away at, and the metal looks rusted, but this won’t be a large undertaking.

“Get the files too!” Mac shouts back at Fuchs, who seems to nod from where he’s digging in the trunk of the rental.

“You’re gonna bury it?” Childs sounds skeptical. He always sounds skeptical.

Mac shrugs. “Ain’t as if he’s gonna get buried here. May as well.”

“You think he would have wanted to be buried here?”

“Probably would’ve had a family plot somewhere. Maybe they’ll add a marker without a body to it. Hell, maybe they’ll hold a g-ddamn military funeral for him. Does it matter?”

Childs looks up at the sky, now, as Fuchs returns, Nauls accompanying him. Fuchs is carrying the box, the folder laying on top of it, and Nauls’ hands are tucked into his pockets. Mac regards them quietly for a second, and then turns for the expanse of land beyond the house, and walks.

Once he’s found a good spot, near one of the slats of the fence, something he can use to mark the location, Mac plants the shovel in the ground. He nods at the box Fuchs is holding. “Maybe you could wrap the gun in his files or something,” he suggests, more half-heartedly than he’d care to admit, as if this act of mourning is work. Maybe it is.

The other three take a seat in the grass as Mac digs. The sun slips under the horizon, shrouding them in darkness, and Nauls fumbles for a moment before withdrawing a flashlight from his jacket pocket. He sets it on the ground, illuminates both tasks at hand.

It’s a quiet affair. Just the sound of shoveling dirt and crinkling paper.

Eventually, Mac sticks the shovel back into soil, and they’re all standing, then, except Fuchs, who is placing the wrapped revolver into the hole. He straightens out after it’s done, frowns at them.

The four of them stare at it for a long time.

Mac takes the matchbook from his pocket, an eternal accessory now, and strikes a match against the side. It takes two tries to light, and then he drops it into the hole. It takes to the paper wrapping surprisingly quickly.

“Just felt right,” he explains, though no one asks. Nauls clicks off the flashlight as the fire grows.

There’s another beat of silence.

“We should say something.” Fuchs breaks it. He sounds almost frantic. “We should- right? He’d want us to say something.”

“He’s dead. Does it matter what he wants?” Mac says it before he thinks better of it, but the most response he gets is a horrified glance from Nauls.

They continue to stare at the fire.

Nobody, in the end, says much of anything. The fire consumes the paper and winks out, no intervention needed, and then they’re left staring at the shadowy shape of a revolver in the ground before Mac starts to loosely kick dirt back over it.

“Shovel would make it easier,” Childs advises after a second of Mac fumbling, and Mac snickers. He keeps kicking.

They sleep in the car that night, parked beside the remnants of what was once a house.

+

Their next motel stay is the following night, somewhere in Missouri. Admittedly, if they’d been going at the pace they’d been at going from Oregon to Kansas, they could have made the drive in a day, but they get a late start the morning after Garry’s -- nobody wants to drive -- and, well, it isn’t entirely pleasant spending days in a car with three other men without having showered.

It’s a quiet little place, just a two-story strip of rooms, and while there aren’t conjoined rooms, Childs does MacReady the favor of making sure the rooms are side-by-side.

They wind up playing cards in Mac and Fuchs’ room that evening. It’s absurdly quiet. No one talks about anything other than the game at hand, which is fine by Mac. He’s starting to feel as if talking is overrated.

At the end of the night, when Nauls and Childs have stepped out, scent of cigarette smoke hanging in the room, Mac finds he’s assembled a greater collection of beer bottles beside his seat at the room’s table than he’d thought. He then finds that he doesn’t feel as steady on his feet as he probably should, which Fuchs seems to pick up on.

“I’ll take them out to the dumpster,” he says, quietly, and takes them in his arms, leaves the room. 

Mac waits for him to get back, wavering a bit where he sits at the edge of his bed. He doesn’t need to, except he does, because he needs to be on guard.

Fuchs seems surprised when he gets back to find Mac awake. He pauses at the door, closes it gently behind him, and gives Mac a long look.

“You still suspect me.”

Mac’s surprised himself at the abruptness of it, though he guesses after a second that it’s been coming. He rubs his eyes wearily. “Not just you,” Mac corrects after a beat, “Just mostly you. If it’s you, then it’s Nauls and Childs, too.” He hesitates. “Maybe me, too. And I’m just hellbent on figuring it out because it knows I would be, if I were still me.”

He hasn’t put a voice to that worry yet. It feels unnatural in his mouth.

Fuchs regards him for a long moment. There’s something like care in his expression, in the squint of his eyes and the purse of his lips. It makes MacReady feel pitied. His head burns.

“So test it,” Fuchs says.

Mac considers this. “I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“Because if it is one of us, we’re already doomed. All of us. There’s no fixin’ it now.” Mac groans, and presses the heels of his palms to his temples. “Shit.”

Fuchs lingers a moment, and then crosses the room to sit on the edge of the bed beside Mac. He’s careful not to brush against him, though, for which Mac is grateful.

“How’d you make it out of there?” Mac asks. Fuchs glances at him, and then down at his hands, and sighs.

“I don’t know,” Fuchs replies carefully, as if he’s trying to feel out the right answer, as if this is some problem to solve. Mac feels some sense of anger, perhaps, or disappointment settling in his stomach. “I… went out looking for someone. I thought I saw someone, and I wanted to know who it was, and the lights were out, so I followed them outside. It was-” Fuchs breaks off, breathes out the exoskeleton of a laugh. He’s shaking slightly, Mac sees, and Mac doesn’t know what to do about that, so he bumps his shoulder against Fuchs’ lightly. “It was stupid. I don’t know. I needed to know. I went outside, and I found shredded clothing. It had  _ your _ name on it, Mac.”

Mac snickers a bit, involuntarily. “Nauls found that, too.”

Fuchs gives him a concerned look, but Mac waves a hand, invites him to go on. Fuchs sighs through his nose, but continues, “I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t know what I thought of it at the time. I didn’t have much time to figure it out, either.” He pauses, cracks his knuckles. “There was someone behind me. I realized, and just turned, and it knocked me over, and…” He waves a hand. Sounds more uncertain now. “Next thing I know part of it’s going up in flames, and I’m scrambling away. I just started running after that. I didn’t trust it, but I didn’t trust you guys either.”

“‘Cause of the clothing.”

“Right.”

Mac considers this. He doesn’t know what to make of it. They found Fuchs’ glasses, but he has new ones now, anyway, and if there was a tussle, that explains the breakage. Maybe it’s true. Maybe Fuchs really did live. Maybe he really is human.

Fuchs seems to be watching him, waiting for some kind of reaction. Mac puts a hand lightly on his shoulder, and then nausea wells up in his stomach, and he shakes his head.

“‘S fine, Fuchs. And it’s late. Let’s get to sleep.”

The biologist recoils at this. He stares at Mac briefly, and then nods, and obligingly gets up. Mac figures he’s too tired himself to properly unwind, so he lays on the bed fully clothed, boots still on, and falls asleep within minutes, as Fuchs is still moving around through the bathroom and bedroom.

Mac dreams of a sea of tapes, and of the lone boat amidst the waters, and of drowning.

+

Bennings’ part of Illinois is a sleepy one at best.

It’s a quaint place with all of the hallmarks of a city, but it seems to move in slow-motion. That could be the four of them, actually. MacReady isn’t sure.

In any case, it’s easy to find the address Bennings listed. Another suburban home, surrounded by platitudes of houses that all look the exact same. The grass in the lawn is dying. It makes Mac uneasy, and judging by the silence in the car as Nauls turns off the engine, he isn’t alone in this feeling.

Something about returning to society after you’ve been isolated from it. Something about walls between you and every other person save for those who shared the experience. Something about the impression of normality.

“I’m not gonna be able to think about anything other than that scream,” Nauls says, and though it’s a grim sentiment, there’s a bubble of laughter in the car, because, G-d, what the fuck, right?

The laughter dies away after another second. “It just wasn’t human,” Fuchs murmurs. It’s true -- whatever it was was the abject rejection of humanity.  _ Wasn’t human _ isn’t an understatement or an exaggeration: it’s the truth. There’s no easier way to put it. It wasn’t human. It wasn’t human, and now it’s gone, and it took a good number of humans with it.

Mac feels nauseous. He gets out of the car.

The others follow shortly, the rush of doors opening and closing making this much clear, and Mac looks around at them to study their expressions. Everyone looks mournful as Mac opens up the trunk, the box, reaches for the cigar case. He weighs it in his hands for a moment, and then reaches up and closes the car once more.

Mac heads for the door. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. He raps his knuckles against it, refusing to look back at them again, and there’s a long pause before the door opens.

There’s a teenager. He’s got a pair of headphones hanging around his neck, Walkman in hand, and he stares at the four of them for a second before wheeling around and yelling, “Mom! There’s some guys here.”

Mac peers over his shoulder, into the house behind him, and eventually a woman slips from around a doorway. She’s braiding her hair, looks a bit harried, and regards the four of them confusedly for a long second before approaching the door.

“Can I help you?” she asks, and Mac frowns.

“You know a George Bennings?” Mac speaks first. The woman pauses before sighing through her nose, and Mac can see the teenager’s eyes roll.

“Ex-husband,” she answers. “He’s doing some work for the National Science Foundation. I’m not sure where, you’d have to contact someone there.” She starts to close the door, but Mac makes the terrible choice of jamming a foot into the space between the door and the frame.

“He’s dead,” Mac says as the edge of the door collides against the side of his boot, and there’s a moment’s hesitation before she opens it again.

She stares at them. The teenager is staring, too, but at the floor -- eyes wide. “Dead,” she echoes, voice flat.

“Killed in an incident at the outpost he was stationed at.” Mac removes his foot, tucks his hands into his pockets. “Sorry.”

She gnaws on her lower lip. “It’s fine. Thank you for telling me.”

“You were his emergency contact, y’know.”

The woman offers a derisive snort at this, and then hurriedly covers her mouth. “Of course. Er. I- I still have his family’s contact information. I can take care of it.”

Mac looks between her and the kid. She’s assumed the same bothered expression she approached the door with, but the teenager still looks taken aback. “Are you sure?” He isn’t certain why he offers. Maybe he just feels bad. “We can do it if you need.”

“It’s really no bother,” she assures, and she goes back to braiding her hair. “We weren’t very close anymore.” She pauses, brushes a hand over the teenager’s shoulder in what must be an attempt at comfort, and then disappears back into the folds of the house.

The teenager stands there, though. He’s passing the Walkman between his hands, seems at a loss for words. Mac looks back around at this point, and sees Fuchs and Nauls have moved back to the car. Childs has his arms crossed over his chest, lips pursed uncomfortably. Of course he’s uncomfortable. Mac is uncomfortable.

“How did he die?”

Mac peers back at the teenager. “Generator malfunction. Killed a lot of people.”

There’s a pause. The teenager studies them. “Everyone there?”

Mac isn’t sure of how to answer. After a second, Childs speaks up, “No.”

“You guys from there?”

“Yeah,” Mac says. The teenager nods. “Yeah, we are.”

“Damn,” he replies. He stares at them for a second longer, and there’s something like suspicion, maybe.

The cigar case in Mac’s hand is weighing on him. He glances at Childs, and then back at the teenager, and offers the case to the kid. Fuchs inhales sharply from behind them, and Mac quickly clarifies, “This was your… this was George’s. Give it to your mom.”

He accepts the case, examines it for a minute, brushes a thumb over the initials. “Okay,” the teenager says, and he closes the door.

The wind is getting stronger. Storm moving in, maybe. Bennings would’ve known better. Isn’t that funny?

MacReady presses out a sigh. His ribs feel too tight, like they’re compressing his lungs. He doesn’t know if he can breathe in. Childs passes a hand over his shoulder in what must be an attempt at comfort (Mac glances back at the closed door), and then moves to the car.

He hovers there for a second before joining them. Tries to regulate his breathing. Tries to make some sense of that thing, some sense of what happened to those other people, some sense of what it meant to have been someone and then something and then to not have been at all.

When Mac moves back to the car, Fuchs is in the passenger seat, so he climbs into the back, and watches Childs watch the street.

+

En route to Georgia, Nauls apparently has the brilliant idea of trying to teach Fuchs to drive.

Neither Childs nor MacReady are awake for this. In fact, it’s the skidding of tires against pavement and the sudden jolting of the car that stirs them both and gives way to Fuchs in the driver’s seat, sweating profusely and looking more anxious than he’s ever looked, and Nauls in the passenger’s, clearly trying to muffle a laugh into one hand as his other clings to the handle beside the window.

Fuchs looks around at the motion of the backseat shifting, and grimaces, sending Nauls a frenzied look. Nauls doesn’t seem to notice. Mac adjusts himself in the seat uncomfortably, and then glances outside. They’re in a parking lot. It’s fine. As long as Fuchs isn’t going to careen into another vehicle and get them all killed, it’s-

Mac feels more awake. He stares at Fuchs. This is a bad thing to teach, assuming he’s one of those.

“We gotta get to Georgia,” Childs points out, voice thick with sleep. He’s slung his jacket over his torso as a blanket, and his eyes are closed again. Mac doesn’t understand. They’re supposed to be the suspicious ones. How is he just okay with this?

“R-right,” Nauls says, voice stuttering with a half-laugh, half-cough. He glances over at Fuchs. “You wanna keep trying, or let me take over?”

“You, please,” Fuchs answers, barely above a breath, and when he opens the door, Mac opens his as well.

“Get some sleep, Fuchs,” Mac instructs, and Fuchs pauses, peers at him from behind his glasses and above the top of the car. He seems to realize something, and shrinks a bit, but nods obligingly. MacReady moves to the passenger’s seat, and Fuchs takes his former spot in the back, and they’re back on the roads within ten minutes.

Mac can’t sleep. Not because Nauls needs him to navigate -- the way to Atlanta is marked as much as any way could be marked -- but because his guard is up now and he can’t seem to shut it back down, not even when he looks around into the backseat some hour later and both Childs and Fuchs are clearly passed out.

He wishes he’d grabbed a bottle from his bag in the back before they’d gotten moving again, but now they’re on the highway pushing 80 and it feels cruel to make Nauls stop just so Mac can get shit-faced.

Nauls is humming softly along with the radio. It’s quiet, very quiet, no need to wake anyone else up, but the song is familiar. MacReady thinks on the nudge of familiarity in his brain for a moment, and then realizes it must have been on the jukebox at the outpost, and his stomach churns.

“We’ll probably wanna stop somewhere in Atlanta tomorrow night,” Nauls says. His voice is hardly above the music. Mac barely conceptualizes it as being said to him. He’s ruminating over this, trying to figure out what to say, and then Nauls continues, “Or outside it. S’posed to be hell in the city.”

“Probably a good amount of places to stay near Atlanta,” Mac murmurs. He stares at the highway ahead. Not a lot of cars. Not surprising. It’s around two. Anybody on the roads at two in the morning is a sad son of a bitch.

“Right,” Nauls agrees. He refuses to meet Mac’s eyes. The song is grating in Mac’s ears, despite its low volume.

“Do you blame me for getting people killed?” Mac asks.

Without missing a beat, Nauls retorts, “Do you blame me for not being with you after Blair?”

Mac tries to count the amount of reflective markers they pass on the road to tune out the music and the question, but they blur together too quickly, and Mac sighs heavily through his nose before reaching over and muting the radio altogether.

“Yeah,” Mac answers after the silence feels concrete enough in the air, “A little.”

Nauls doesn’t look over at this. He seems to relax, almost. “Yeah,” he says, “Me too.”

Mac can’t tell what he’s referring to. Whether he blames Mac, or whether he blames himself. Maybe it’s both. Sometimes Mac thinks it’s both for him, as well.

“I did what I had to,” MacReady says, regardless of what the answer is.

“None of us trusted you.” Nauls’ voice is even. He seems to be speaking from a script. Has probably rolled over this conversation in his head over and over. “You didn’t have to be in charge.”

Mac doesn’t want to concede to this. He did his best. And he saved people, or he tried -- really, on a conscious level, he didn’t save anyone at all. Fuchs saved himself in the cold with that flare, and Childs survived by being on his own, and Mac has no idea how Nauls is here, but he knows it wasn’t him. MacReady hardly even saved himself. He saved maybe a sixth of himself, quarter at best. The rest of him is still there. Still in the Antarctic. Partially burnt, partially frozen.

“That isn’t true,” Nauls admits after a moment, more tentative, and he seems…  _ sad _ . “Most of us didn’t trust you.”

Mac doesn’t press the issue. He doesn’t want to know what people who are dead thought of him. He might have to ask Nauls to turn on the child locks on the car to keep Mac from putting all of that effort spent towards surviving to waste.

“I hid.”

Mac looks back over at this. “Huh?”

“I hid. The- I heard it movin’ around. Blair. Whatever used to be him.” Nauls pauses, swallows. This doesn’t seem like something he’d planned on saying. It seems more like spilling out, and Nauls looks determinedly at the road. “I didn’t… it  _ scared  _ me. I hid. And it went below the floorboards, and I just… ran. Knew it didn’t want me. Not when you had- when you had what could kill it.”

Mac studies Nauls’ face for a minute. It’s as if he’s haunted.

“So that was it. Now you can blame me a lot.”

Mac considers this quietly.

Nauls finally looks over. He seems scared. Like they’re still there. Mac figures that if he left that much of himself behind, others must have, too. So maybe Nauls is still there. At least in part. How much of himself did he lose?

“Can you put on the hazards and pull off-road?”

Nauls starts, and then glances harriedly around the car. “Is there something wrong?” He’s looking for some kind of emergency lights on the dashboard, but there aren’t any.

“Yeah,” Mac says, because there is  _ something _ wrong. It’s the same thing that’s been wrong ever since the Swedes ( _ Norwegians, Mac, _ Copper reminds him again, and he feels like something poisonous, something rotting) dug up that damn ship.

Nauls looks confused, but he obligingly pulls over. Mac clambers out of the car, moves around to the back, and picks up his duffel to move it to the passenger’s seat with him. He sets it on the floorboard, climbs back in, and closes the door as he digs a bottle of J&B out of the bag. Nauls is watching with wide eyes.

“You can get going again now,” Mac says.

There’s a pause here, like Nauls wants to say something, but whatever it is dies on his tongue, and he shakes his head a bit as he flicks off the hazards and shifts the car back into drive.

+

By the time they hit the outskirts of Atlanta, it’s too late to justify making the stop. 

Childs is driving. Fuchs keeps an eye out on the road for an inn for the evening as Mac is uselessly nursing a headache in the backseat and Nauls naps across from him. Eventually, Fuchs points out one that has an agreeable enough rate, and Childs pulls into the lot. Fuchs gets out to go rent the rooms, leaving the three of them alone in the car.

Mac drops his head against the seat in front of him. Childs turns at the motion, and hums with some kind of disapproval before leaning over to give Nauls a shake awake. As he stirs, Childs rolls down the window, and digs a cigarette out of the central console of the car.

MacReady snickers a bit at this. Nauls does, too, but he covers it with a cough, and pretends he doesn’t see the dirty look Childs shoots into the backseat. Mac, however, meets it, and glares back.

They end up staring at each other the remainder of the wait, and Childs doesn’t get a chance to finish his cigarette before Fuchs returns to the car with two keys and an armful of towels.

It’s some time later that they’re back to playing cards in one of the rooms, television on and playing a horror movie. Mac looks up every time there’s a shrill scream, but no one bothers to turn it off, even though he sees the way all of them tense. It’s just a movie. Maybe if he were braver the sound wouldn’t bother him, or maybe if it had been just a bit longer since it all happened, or maybe if it hadn’t occurred at all. 

This seems like too high a hope. He focuses on his hand instead of on the movie.

Fuchs breaks the quiet monotony of the game. “What happened?”

There’s a long wait.

“Nauls found shredded clothing with Mac’s name on it,” Childs answers, thoughtful, mulling over it as he says it. “We locked him out. Thought he was one of them. But he got inside, and Norris and Nauls try to take him. Doesn’t work. Triggers Norris’ heart condition.”

Mac sets his hand down, and plants his face in his palms.

“We rush Norris to Copper, and the doc tries to help him. Wheels out the defibrillator. Norris opens up his chest-”

“It wasn’t Norris,” Nauls says. His voice is almost hoarse, like he’s struggling to talk.

“What used to be Norris opens up his chest, rips off Copper’s damn arms. No helping him. Mac flames it, sees something, realizes how this thing works. So he sets up his own version of the blood test.”

Fuchs shuffles in his seat.

“Pulls us into the rec room. We still don’t trust him, but he’s got Garry’s gun. Threatens me. Clark rushes Mac with a scalpel. Mac shoots Clark dead.”

MacReady rubs his eyes wearily. He can feel everyone staring at him, now.

“He has Palmer and Windows tie the rest of us up. Draws blood from everyone, heats up a wire to test it, explains it. And he tests it. Windows, then Copper, then Clark, and then Palmer, and Palmer’s one of them. All of us tied to the same couch, and Mac’s flamethrower ain’t working, so we’re yelling at Windows to do it.”

“Doomed from the start, man,” Nauls mutters. It’s quiet, but it’s loud enough.

“Except he can’t. And Pa- that thing kills him. So Mac burns both of them. And the rest of us -- Nauls, Garry, me -- we’re human, but Blair’s still in the shed.”

“You left him there?” Fuchs asks in clear disbelief.

“What else were we supposed to do? Weave him a flower crown and tell him it’s fine to attack people?” Childs’ voice drips with sarcasm, though his brow is knitted, lips pursed. Almost upset. “We left him there. And Nauls, Mac, Garry, they go to test Blair, leave me there to keep watch.” He pauses. “What happened after that, MacReady?”

Mac pauses for a long moment. “We went out to the toolshed. He wasn’t there, door was open, and we find this opening below the floor, down into this cavern. We head down, and there’s a spaceship. Looks like this small version of what we found near the Norwegian camp. Used parts from the chopper to build it. We head back, and the generator goes out, so we head into the basement, plan to blow the whole outpost up. Kill us and it.” He takes in a slow breath from between his palms. He figures his voice must be muffled, but no one stops him. “Blair must’ve… gotten to Garry. I thought he got to Nauls, too, but…”

Mac doesn’t know what to say. He peeks up for a moment, catches the uncomfortable shift Nauls makes in his chair.

“I’ve still got dynamite. I use it. Base goes up in flames. I wander out, mean to curl up and die somewhere in peace, and then Childs comes out of the woodworks. So we sit. And we watch the fire.”

MacReady lets silence hang in the air. When no one speaks, he mumbles to himself about nothing in particular, and gets up, moves to the room’s fridge to take out a beer can. He turns to them.

“Where were you, Childs?” Mac asks, and his voice is near accusatory. It shouldn’t be. He knows as much. The knowledge doesn’t help.

Childs lifts his chin, stares back at Mac. “I told you, Mac.”

Mac pops open the tab of the can. “Right. You left. Because you thought you saw Blair. And you got lost. But somehow you found your way back.”

“Those fires were burning pretty high,” Childs responds evenly.

“They were,” Fuchs agrees. He’s speaking softly, as if afraid to disturb the tension in the room. “It’s how the choppers they sent found you guys. The fires.”

Mac tenses, takes a slow sip from the beer. He almost wonders as to whose side Fuchs is on, and then has to stop himself and remind himself that there are no sides. Tests proved they were human. Not liking one another does not mean they’re at war.

Unless, of course, Fuchs is one of them, and the tests were faked, but Mac doesn’t want to think about that right now. His head hurts.

Another shriek on the television rips them out of the silence. A masked man with a bloody knife advances towards a terrified-looking woman.

Nauls gets up and presses the power button on the set. The screen flickers off.

+

Windows’ address leads them to a pleasant looking house somewhere in one of the boroughs surrounding Atlanta. They end up taking a detour around the city -- Mac is driving, and decides the clamor of city traffic would be too much, and no one finds it time-consuming enough to complain about.

The instant the car is parked, Mac is getting out. He doesn’t want to spend any time longer here than is necessary. No dinner with the family, no nothing, they will tell whoever is here what happened and they will leave. He knows the others are lingering by the car, probably grabbing the magen david necklace with its bent, burnt metal from the box, but Mac doesn’t linger. Doesn’t want to linger.

He strides up to the door. The path from the street is paved, with small lights that would be illuminated if it weren’t a little before noon. The others follow. Nauls and Fuchs seem subdued, while Childs’ shoulders are squared and he’s frowning at the pavement ahead of them.

MacReady raps his knuckles against the door twice. They wait for a long minute, long enough that he almost thinks there’s no one here despite the car in the drive, and then a man opens the door. He’s got glasses perched on his nose and graying curls, and he inspects the four of them closely for a minute. “What is it?”

There’s a lull.

Nauls speaks up, “This Windows’ emergency contact?”

The man huffs a tired laugh, and then glances around behind him at the house. Mac catches sight of someone else, sitting on the stairs visible from the front entrance, smoking a cigarette. The resemblance solidifies it in Mac’s head. “Yeah,” Windows’ father answers finally, “Suppose so. Windows. That’d be us.”

The other fellow sitting on the stairs is watching them.

After the silence drags on too long, the man rubs his temples with his forefingers, and says, “He send you to tell us something, huh? Well, don’t worry about it. If he’s got something to say to us, tell him to say it himself.”

The door closes. Mac blinks at it.

“Shit,” Mac mutters.

Nauls glances between them. “What now?”

It’s another pause. No one seems sure of what to say. They don’t seem to have to, though -- eventually, there comes the sound of the doorknob turning, and that fellow from the stairs (brother, Mac figures) slowly opens the door. He’s holding the cigarette still, though it’s no longer lit.

“You’re here about Windows?” He sounds almost hopeful.

Mac lets his shoulder drop against the wall to the side of the door, takes care to avoid disturbing the mezuzah. Resentment churns in his stomach. The brother’s eyes linger on him for a second.

“It ain’t good news,” Nauls says slowly, hesitating on all but every word.

The brother shrinks a bit. “No?”

“No,” Nauls answers. He glances between MacReady and Childs and Fuchs fervently, but Mac averts his gaze and doesn’t know how Childs or Fuchs respond. In any case, he continues after a second, “There was a bad accident at the outpost. The generator blew. It…” he trails off. Doesn’t seem to know what to say. After a second, he reaches into his jacket pocket, takes out the necklace, extends it to the brother.

It’s awful, really, the journeys people take after hearing this. Mac pointedly avoids watching this one.

“Ah,” the brother chokes out. “Oh.” There’s a delicate clinking of chain as he takes it.

They’re all at a loss. There’s nothing to say that’s enough. No turn of phrase that could make it okay.

Nauls places a hand gently on his shoulder. Nauls opens his mouth to say something, but whatever it is won’t come, and he drops his hand again in silence.

Mac turns back for the car at this point. He doesn’t hear if anyone says anything else, but they join him in the rental soon enough, and when he glances back at the house, Windows’ brother is leaning against the doorway, staring at the cigarette he’s turning between his fingers.

They leave him like that.

+

They drive the remainder of the day, stopping at a Wendy’s in South Carolina as they head north. Nauls expresses distaste at this, and insists they get a hotel that evening again so that they can have something of quality to eat. Mac, still driving, agrees, mostly because he wants to get shit-faced after that ordeal and he won’t feel confident doing that if he has to remain an option to drive.

They’re near the border of Virginia and Maryland, some ways west of DC, when they stop at a hotel. It’s a quiet place, not particularly inviting, but there’s no need to be. Why should a space need to welcome them?

Nauls makes dinner. It’s tremendous. They all eat it separately, sitting on their beds, talking to no one else.

+

They leave at seven the next day. Another five hours get them to New York, which means it’s noon when Fuchs says, from where he sits in the passenger seat, “You guys can see the city. I- I’ll tell Blair’s contact. No need to worry about it.”

Mac’s suspicions regarding Fuchs should win out, but they don’t. He doesn’t want to confront whatever loved ones Blair had. He’ll see that thing again. Chest opening up. Mess of horror, blood, gore. He doesn’t need it.

So Fuchs hurries off down one street on his own, telling them to be back at the car at around five to leave, and Nauls, Childs, and Mac hover by the car for a long second, unsure of what to do.

“I’ve never been to New York,” Childs says after a minute. He’s smoking as he says it, exhales and watches the cloud dissipate in the air. “Have either of you?”

“Never had much need,” Mac answers.

Nauls shakes his head. “LA’s busy enough for me, man.”

Childs chuckles at this. He casts a look around the street, people bustling by, and straightens himself out a bit. “We gonna stay glued to this car for the next few hours, or act like people for once?”

It’s a fair enough question. Mac smiles. It feels like a real smile. This takes him aback, which in turn makes him smile harder, eyes crinkling with the motion. “Let’s take a walk,” Mac suggests, and they get moving, and for a few hours, they act like people.

When they meet back at the car, Fuchs is already leaning against it. He’s holding some bag, and looks like he’s been crying, though he offers the group a smile and a wave when they approach.

He notices the disposable camera Nauls is holding, and swipes a hand at his eyes, laughs softly. “You became tourists. Good.”

“I don’t see the appeal in this place,” Mac confesses as he climbs into the backseat, “It’s busy.”

“That’s big cities,” Nauls says, leaving the camera on top of the car for a moment as he plays a quick game of rock paper scissors with Childs for the honor of driving. When Childs loses, he grumbles, and slides into the seat. “They’re always busy.”

“I like it,” Fuchs muses. He’s in the passenger’s seat, already unfolding a map to plot out the quickest way to Boston. “You’re just another person. Among so many other people.”

The engine turns on. Childs watches the street carefully before pulling out. “Easy to feel alone, though.”

“It’s easy to feel alone anywhere,” Fuchs answers. There’s the sound of shuffling paper as he folds up the map.

Nauls hums. “Especially at isolated Antarctic outposts.”

Mac closes his eyes, crosses his arms, tries to lean into sleep as the conversation ends.

+

They get to the next address later that night, and Nauls winds up shaking MacReady awake. He blinks blearily outside of the car, stares out at the apartment building.

“Why are we here?” he asks, voice heavy with sleep, and Fuchs exhales softly as he pushes open the door.

“It’s Copper’s contact,” Childs answers, and Mac rubs his eyes, opens his door to peer out and up at the night sky.

“Why are we here this damn late?”

“Fuchs thinks we can wrap this up tonight. Be done with it.” Childs exits the car as well. There’s something almost depressing about this notion, something that makes Mac look at the ground for a moment, at the yellow paint of the parking space. They were doing something. Soon, they won’t be. Mac hasn’t even thought about what he’s going to do with himself after this. The world doesn’t seem meant for him anymore.

Mac gets out, closes the door, joins the others. They’ve already dug through the box for the wedding ring -- Nauls is holding it delicately. There’s a woman approaching the front door of the apartment building, dark hair pulled into a braid, backpack hanging over one shoulder, and she glances at them approaching, opens the door for them.

In the lobby of the building, Fuchs nods for the four of them to move to the corner. The woman moves along to the mailboxes. Mac watches her stop at 4C, and the memories of the listed contacts come dripping back in.

He interrupts whatever Fuchs is saying by moving to the mailboxes. “You know a Dr. Copper?”

The woman looks to him, shoulders tense. “Oh, er, yes. My father.”

MacReady glances back over at the rest of them. They must have overheard, because their eyes are the size of platters, save Childs, who’s looking determinedly at the floor.

Nauls comes over. Fuchs and Childs remain in the corner. Mac meets Nauls’ eyes, and the younger man frowns before telling her, in a quiet voice, “We were with him at the job in Antarctica.”

She quirks a brow. “I was under the impression that wasn’t over until…” and then she must notice the expressions they wear and the look they’re exchanging, because she trails off, stares between them. After a moment, she shakes her head slowly, and then says, “Something happened.”

“He’s dead,” Mac says. He sounds more even than he feels. He thinks he might have to leave and lose his guts on the curb outside.

She’s quiet for a long time. Just sort of stares at the mailbox, which is hanging open, letters sitting inside.

“Great,” she says, and Mac’s head spins. “Sitting shiva twice in a year.”

She closes the mailbox. Swallows hard.

“He was a good man,” Nauls offers. The daughter glances at him, and nods, and then her face crumples, and she shifts suddenly, pulling Nauls into what can only be described as a hug. Nauls looks taken aback before he hugs back carefully. Mac looks at the floor. It’s tiled. Looks a bit like a checkerboard -- black and white linoleum. He hears Nauls say something into her ear, but it’s too quiet for MacReady to make out, and he moves back.

It takes a moment for Nauls to pull away, giving her a pat on the shoulder. He isn’t holding the ring anymore. She’s not quite crying, not at the moment, but it’s close. Mac purses his lips.

“Be safe,” she tells them, loudly enough for Fuchs and Childs in the corner to hear, and then she moves for the stairs.

They stay until the sound of her shoes against the floor fades, and then Childs nods for the door.

They leave.

+

At the hotel, before they’ve even brought in all of their luggage, Nauls is moving through both rooms, carefully covering the mirrors with the same delicate motion as the last time. This night, however, instead of solemnly staying in the room, he leaves.

He takes the car. Mac isn’t sure what to do about that, and Childs seems similarly on edge, but Fuchs is confident he’ll return, and Mac wants to be the kind of person who gives people the benefit of the doubt, even now.

Nauls gets back relatively quickly, holding a bag, and he shuffles off to bed without speaking, so the others follow suit.

The next morning, before anyone is awake enough to protest, he’s making breakfast and setting up chairs and candles in his and Childs’ room. When Mac peeks in, eyes settling shakily on the array, Nauls looks up from where he’s placing a candle beside the television set, and says, “We’re staying here for the day.”

Mac glances at Fuchs, who is passing through the doorway at the sound of a match being lit, and shrugs.

Mac sinks into one of the chairs. Nauls seems to relax at this, and looks almost relieved when Fuchs and Childs follow suit. He lights another candle, being the only sources of light outside of the early morning sun coming in through the drawn curtains, and then finishes the food. He stops to give a plate to each of them, and then sits at another chair.

They’re unified, then, sitting facing the others.

It’s quiet. Very quiet. Mac isn’t sure how much time passes before anyone moves in any way aside from the typical mechanisms of eating.

Fuchs breaks the stillness first. He moves forward, tugs his glasses off, and buries his face in his palms, dish forgotten beside the chair on the floor.

There’s a lot to envy about having gotten out as early as Fuchs did. Or there isn’t, and Mac is continually trying to justify it -- the way he acts, the way he thinks. There’s really nothing to envy about any of these situations. Paranoia circles his mind like a fucking vulture. He doesn’t really know what to do with himself anymore.

The obvious answer is to move on. They’ve done the burials, so to speak, and Mac has no reason to mourn. He didn’t know those people. They were some strangers he spent some time with before a terrible thing happened. If it hadn’t been for that, he doubts he’d even remember any of their names.

But the terrible thing happened. It happened, and it is in a persistent state of continuing to happen, if only in Mac’s thoughts.

Which loops right back around to that it shouldn’t be happening. Mac won. Or, if he’s being honest, he lost, so he made sure it lost, too. It wasn’t a heroic gesture. It was spite.

Mac glances over at Fuchs, whose head is still in his hands, at Nauls, who sits back in his chair and stares at the wall, at Childs, whose hands are folded in his lap while his eyes angled towards the floor. What a fucked up group they make. There’s no cohesion, nothing meaningful. Random choice.

The candles burn for a while. Mac doesn’t know what Nauls intends to happen. If it’s for them to sit and stir in their misery, it works.

Mac’s brain takes him in loops. He’s paranoid. He’s right. They are the same thing, see --  _ being paranoid _ and  _ being right _ , though that’s impossible, so it’s dismissed once again. He figures he might, in fact, be a bit fucked up in the head.

They continue to sit, each wrapped up in their own thoughts, and when the sun sinks outside and the only light is the candles at the waning of the day, Mac feels marginally more settled. He sleeps like the dead that night.

+

The hotel that following morning is quiet.

Nobody moves their belongings back into the rental. The door between the rooms hangs open, and it’s as MacReady is nursing a bottle of whiskey, Fuchs is idly thumbing through the room’s copy of the Bible, and Childs is pacing back and forth between the rooms with a cigarette hanging between his fingers that Nauls asks the question from where he’s sitting beside the television.

“What do we do now?”

Childs pauses in his walking, glances over at MacReady. Mac peers back at him from over the lip of the bottle. Fuchs drops the book into his lap as he looks between the three of them, leaving it to Childs to finally answer.

“Why don’t we just stick together a while, see what happens?”

The meaning isn’t lost on MacReady. A laugh stirs in his chest, and when Childs offers Mac the remainder of the smoke, Mac accepts.

They leave the hotel as a group a few hours later, sun hanging in the sky overhead, no real direction in mind as Mac pulls onto the highway.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to my beloved friends for editing this i would never be able to do anything without you
> 
> thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, happy trails!


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